USB Pendrives and Distributions for Them

A look at three distributions you can use to boot Linux from a USB pendrive.

A pendrive is a USB storage device. You plug it in to a USB port, and
if the pendrive is compatible with your operating system, it should
look exactly like another disk on your system. These days, it is easy to
find pendrives with 1GB of storage.

It so happens that there has been an explosion of bootable live CD
versions of Linux. Both commercial and noncommercial Linux distributions
are providing live CDs (including Linspire, SUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu,
Knoppix and Mepis, to name only a few—there are many more).

Imagine a mixture of both concepts—a USB storage device and a live CD
version of Linux. You can pack a lot of features of a GNU/Linux live CD
into 1GB. The USB pendrive has the advantage of being writable, which
the live CD lacks. So, you can boot Linux from a pendrive and store data
on it too. The end result is that, as long as you can find a machine
that will boot from a pendrive, you have a fully portable version of
Linux that carries your applications, settings and data.

The Choices

I cover three LiveUSB distributions in this article: SLAX, Damn Small Linux (DSL)
and Flash Linux. Each one has different window managers
and different apps.

SLAX works with tmpfs and Unification fs (UFS), which gives
it some nice advantages. SLAX is based on Slackware Linux with the
2.6 Linux kernel.

DSL is a little distribution of 50MB. DSL configures Fluxbox very
nicely. Some of the apps included are Mozilla Firefox, the Slypheed mail
client, xmms, text editors, graphics viewers and more. It includes
a 2.4 Linux kernel with good hardware detection, but it doesn't have
the big apps other distributions have, such as The GIMP. It is a compact
distribution with a script to install it to LiveUSB.

Finally, Flash Linux is a solid distribution that uses the 2.6 kernel
and the fast JFFS2 filesystem. It has good speed, both as a live CD
and LiveUSB, and it includes large applications, such as The GIMP and
OpenOffice.org. It
uses grub, bootsplash, framebuffers and GNOME, and is based on Gentoo.

Boot from USB

The biggest challenge in using a USB pendrive for your Linux distribution
is booting the pendrive. Old motherboards do not support the ability to
boot from USB hardware, so you may need to use a floppy disk to boot your
USB-based distribution. Newer motherboards let you boot drives usually
referred to as USBHDD, USBZIP, USB-FDD and others, such as USB-CDROM.

The first step to using a pendrive is to delete the original pendrive
partitions, if there are any. Then, add a FAT16 partition, and format it
with mkdosfs. I used cfdisk to do the work, but you can use fdisk too.

Check your dmesg log when you plug in the device to see if it is working:

dmesg | tail

You should see a message similar to the following:

sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1

Format the partition you created with the following line:

mkdosfs -F 16 /dev/sda1

(Change sda1 to whatever partition is appropriate for your system.)

Unplug the hardware, and plug it in again. You now are ready to install the
distribution.

Damn Small Linux

Go to the DSL Web site (see the on-line Resources) and download
the ISO image file for the current version of DSL, and burn the ISO to
a CD or DVD. Boot from this CD or DVD. The boot starts with a welcome
screen, like most live distributions.

DSL looks for hardware, and then it installs and configures it. Depending on
your machine, it will bring up an X server running Fluxbox in less than
two minutes.

After booting from the DSL live CD, right-click on the Fluxbox desktop to
open the Fluxbox menu. Go to Apps→Tools→Install to install it to your
USB pendrive. Here, you have two options for installing the distribution:
install to USBHDD or USBZIP hardware. DSL will ask about the location of
the pendrive, and it also asks if you want to install DSL from the live CD,
from a file or from the Web.

I suggest you use your broadband connection to download the files. In
fact, if you have a router that supports DHCP, DSL should recognize your
Ethernet card and have no problems accessing the Internet at boot time.
DSL supports PPPoE too, if your Internet connection requires it.

I missed the features of the 2.6 kernel (the next release of DSL should
support 2.6), but it's still a good little distribution. I think DSL
is fine as it is, but if you need a big office suite, you should use
SLAX. Resources that you must read if you use DSL
are the Wiki and
the complete DSL forums. You will find many tips and tricks with plenty
of information that will be helpful if you run into problems.

Comment viewing options

My name is REV.Rob .Heisler .I'm writing from Illinois,in the U.S.A and i'm looking to make some purchases of some particular products for a local church school as the first step towards our aim to help our unable brother's and sister in the work of the Lord.

Please do let me know if you can make available pendrives .I'm looking to make a purchase of about 250 pcs.Please inform me on your stock rates.

please let me know if you have some or more in stock and also please inform/advise me on your forms of payment.
I will like to pay by credit card.Also would like to use my own means of shipping.Hope to hear back from you soon.

But oddly the command shown is only the one for LILO,
What's the commands needed to do the similar thing with grub?
Many linux distros don't install lilo at all anymore.
I have Fedora Core 5 and it doesn't have lilo in /sbin but
only /sbin/grub so I'm stuck not know how to setup grub
for my pendrive for SLAX.